When it comes to diversity grants, NIH hopes bigger is betterScience The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has funded scores of programs over the last four decades aimed at increasing the number of minorities who apply for its bread-and-butter investigator grants. But NIH Director Francis Collins is not satisfied with the progress to date in correcting the serious underrepresentation of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in the applicant pool.

Making chemistry greenThe New York TimesFor nearly 40 years, the Food and Drug Administration has wrestled with regulating the chemicals triclosan and triclocarban as they have become among the world’s most ubiquitous environmental contaminants. Designed to kill bacteria, they have been added to antibacterial soaps, cosmetics and other consumer products despite longstanding concerns about their impacts on humans and the environment. The fact that they are still being used underscores the need to reform the nation’s regulatory system and manufacturing approach for chemicals.

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Why 'Interstellar' is great for women in STEMU.S. News & World ReportWhen the mind-bending filmmaker Christopher Nolan began working on the script for “Interstellar” with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, he made a crucial change: He opted to make Murph — a brilliant scientist and one of the film's central characters — a woman, and eventually cast Jessica Chastain for the role.

5 behaviors that can ruin your careerBusiness InsiderIf you seem to be on a downward spiral at work, Jack Welch, executive chairman of The Jack Welch Management Institution and former CEO of GE, says it may be time to take a "good look in the mirror" and figure out what you're doing wrong.
He says in a recent LinkedIn post that your behaviors could very well be to blame for your "stalled or faltering career."

Women who compute: Overcoming lack of gender diversity in science and technologyScientific ComputingA recent statistical analysis of gender diversity by Emma Pierson, “In Science, It Matters That Women Come Last” determined that, on average, a female scientist is more likely to be first author (indicating the scientist who is primarily responsible for the paper), but is less likely to be last author (indicating the senior scientist who supervised the work). (Note the authors’ gender was inferred from their first names in the Pierson study.) Further, female scientists write far fewer papers and are especially unlikely to publish papers on their own.

Space: The final frontier in silicon chemistryPhys.orgSilicon, which is one of the most common elements in the Earth's crust, is also sprinkled abundantly throughout interstellar space. The only way to identify silicon-containing molecules in the far corners of the cosmos — and to understand the chemistry that created them — is to observe through telescopes the electromagnetic radiation the molecules emit.

Tech star wants to make diversity plug-and-play for Silicon ValleyNPRTristan Walker is successful by anyone's standards: He went to a top-notch prep school, graduated as valedictorian at college, went on to become a trader on Wall Street, earned an MBA at Stanford, and then helped to launch the location app Foursquare.
But what makes Walker so remarkable is that he is one of the few African-Americans to rise up the ranks in Silicon Valley.